Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just curious, how do you set up your enclosures? I've never been a fan of rack systems such as those used for corns. How do you manage a collection of large snakes? Do you ever house more than one boa in the same enclosure?

Well, I have a variety of cages.

I have one stack of 4 Vision 221 cages, which all have sliding glass doors, which are now in a black plastic shelving unit (I didn't like how much they moved around when just stacked on each other).

I also have a large wooden homemade cage with glass doors, and made a rack for it to sit on, with two frames that pull out on drawer pulls and each holds an Iris ve175 tub.

I don't house one snake with another unless I'm trying to breed them. Even then, I have the male's cage set up and ready, should I want to separate them for a 'break'. In my opinion, it's too hard to keep track of shedding, and defecation when there's more than one snake in a cage, and feeding becomes a problem because you have to feed them separately in plastic tubs, and then wait for a while before putting them back in their main cage (often bathing them after eating to help remove rodent odor).

Plastic caging (there are several competitors now, including Boaphile, AP, RBI, BARRs etc) is great, because you can SEE into each cage, unlike most racks, and they seem like they stack nicely and make a great display. If I had to buy more cages, it'd be some of the plastic ones like that.
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Lauren Madar - OphidiaGems.com | CageMakers
1.0 BP, 1.0 Hog Is., 1.1 Hypo BCI, 1.1 Surinam BCC, 0.1 GTP

Enclosures are a funny thing. For my first couple of boas I made my own 4'x 8' custom wooden enclosure, separated into 2 4'x2' sections. It took me a week to build and looks great. When my collection increased, I bought 3 boaphiles, because I just didn't have it in me to build another custom enclosure. Most recently, as my collection continues to grow I bought two 52 inch tubs from reptiletubs.com that I have been very happy with. So, as you can see, it is not written in stone. I try to do what best for my animals and my wallet. -john-
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You know you're getting old when you make more noise getting up off the couch than you do during sex.

Generally housing 2 snakes in the same cage should only be done temporarily if at all. My boas arnt so incredibly big that its a problem . . yet. However, im sure i will end up making/buying some 6' long pvc based cages and stack them on top of eachother.

The only snakes i have that are paired up right now are my two Western Hognoses, they are both in a 20L atm and doing fine.
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Russ
1.0 Basset Hound (Goofy)
1.0 Brazilian Rainbow Boa (Apollo)
1.0 Columbian Rainbow Boa (Odin)
1.0 Guyana Red-Tail Boa (Ares)
0.1 Pastel Salmon Boa (Minerva)
0.1 Rosy Boa (Athena)
1.1 Western Hognoses (???)

Melbourne, Fl

I have vision, neodesha, and now boaphile cages. It just depends on what I can afford at the time. All of them work fine. If you have the cash, you could buy a Freedom Breeder rack. You can get them with windows so they look like a regular cage, and clean as easily as a rack. The only problem is shipping costs...its not much more to ship a whole stack than it is to just get one level.

The 4 foot cages seem to be pretty reasonable. 6 & 8 foot cages seem to be inordinately high in comparison.

Travis
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Travis Rose
Lazy S Snake Ranch
(859) 582-7310
1.0 100% DH for Snow Boa
1.0 Hypo, 66% DH Moonglow Boa
0.1 Normal Common Boa
0.1 Circle Back Normal Boa
0.1 66% DH for Snow Boa
2.4 Kenyans
0.3 Dogs (1 Full Pitbull, 1 Pit/Husky, & 1 Bernese Mt. Dog cross)
0.3 Cats (1 fat, 1 old, and 1 insane)
0.1 Very understanding wife
1.0 Toddler (WC...still bites and musks)

Only time they're together is for breeding. Other than that, each has it's own cage or tub. All based on size, the larger th4e snake the larger the enclosure. I have several sizes. They start off life in a shoebox size rack like one of these:

or

As they grow, they get moved to a larger sweaterbox tub rack like these:

That same 10 level rack will also hold the larger blanket box tub sideways similar to one of the levels shown in this smaller rack:

When they outgrow that tub, they move into my largest tubs, Iris CB110's in one of these racks:

From there they would move into one of two type cages I have, Boaphile 421D:

or into a larger sandmar industries 4' x 32" x 24" melamine cage. Sorry, don't have pics of those cages

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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
24.36 BRB
19.19 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats